by Neil McGarry
“So what will you do?”
Duchess rubbed her eyes. “Tell Ferroc she has a deal. Tremaine’s offer is no better, and at least this way Jana gets to be with her brother.” She rolled her eyes as Lysander jumped up and down with glee. “And there’s a chance that we can figure out what Minette’s up to...” She glanced over at him, raising an eyebrow. “If Mikkos could be convinced to spy for us as well.”
Lysander’s smile was as dazzling as the elusive Rodaasi sun as he slid an arm around her shoulder. “Leave it to me. Given time, I’m sure I can talk that boy into all sorts of things.”
Chapter Seventeen: The path not taken
They stood on the edge of the Shallows and looked down into the Deeps.
“When’s the last time you went back?” Duchess asked Lysander.
He glanced away, to where Castor had paused to check his sword. “I haven’t,” he replied.
She paused. “Never?”
He turned back in her direction. “The Deeps aren’t exactly a place you want to go back to, dearheart.”
She reached out a hand and he shifted his stout walking stick to grasp it. Between it, her daggers and Castor’s sword, she hoped it was enough to keep them safe.
“I’m sorry to ask this of you,” she whispered as Castor stepped back into the road.
Lysander chuckled. “The two of you’d end up wandering Mayu knows how long without ever finding the Narrows. Can’t have you returning to Jadis with a sad tale like that. With me leading, we can be down and back in a day.”
“Then let’s get started,” Castor said, and they headed down the hill.
They made their slow and careful way through the beginnings of the slums, traveling the road where once the Brutes had attacked the three of them, outside of Jana’s old home. The city was full of tales about the Deeps, which was unpatrolled by the blackarms and unmentioned by the nobles. The stories were as varied as the people who told them, but on one point they all agreed: the Deeps were a lawless place, and the only rule there was that of the sword. Jana’s former apartment was the furthest Duchess had ever been into the district, but today they were headed towards the Narrows, the deepest and most dangerous area of the city. She could not imagine why Keeper Morel would choose such a place to set up his cult, but there he was.
The buildings they passed were largely made of wood, strange to her eyes. The rest of the city was constructed largely of the same gray stone from which the walls between the districts were made. The Deeps were well known for being vulnerable to fire and she idly wondered if they would pass the fabled Lane of Ash. She glanced at Lysander and his face was alert but expressionless.
There were more people on the streets than she would have expected: women carrying sacks or baskets, men moving uphill to look for work in better districts, children at play in buildings both occupied and abandoned. They were dirtier, thinner, and had a more wary look than those of the Shallows, and they gave Duchess and her companions a wide berth, obviously aware they did not belong here.
“So many women,” Castor quietly remarked. Duchess had noticed the same thing. “Where are their men?”
Lysander chuckled mirthlessly. “Dead or gone, it makes no difference. Left alone, the women have nowhere else to go.”
Castor looked at him skeptically. “Why would they come here?” The ganymede rolled his eyes and made no reply, but Duchess understood.
“Women lose their property when they marry,” she reminded Castor, “and they don’t always get it back if their husbands die before them. Sometimes their children keep it, or else they have no children and their husband’s family does the same. When that happens, where else are they to go?”
“What about the woman’s family? Why doesn’t she return to them?”
Lysander snorted impatiently. “I don’t know how things work where you’re from, but down here not everyone has a family to go back to. Even if they had the coin to leave the city, most of them have never known a home other than the Shallows. When there’s no place for them even there, they can find some sort of home here—although they’d better sleep with one eye open.”
Castor made no reply, which was a relief. He wasn’t fond of Lysander—he’d made that clear enough—but she didn’t need the two of them getting into a fight, not here.
“Maybe we’ll run into the Tenth Bell Boys,” Duchess said, to lighten the mood. “If we pass the Belfry on the way down, we can check in, yes? I’m sure they’d help you.” Lysander had been close to Zachary and the others ever since he’d left their number.
He laughed lightly. “No, they won’t. Lightboys stick together, but they don’t stick their necks out for outsiders. Even outsiders who were once lightboys. They’ll be friendly enough, sure, but if it comes to trouble we’re on our own.”
The road, now more mud than cobbles, continued downward, and the buildings on either side seemed to lean towards them, in some places almost touching overhead. It was as if the whole district were a great hand, tightening slowly around them. The figures in the streets became fewer, more furtive, but Duchess noticed small gardens here and there, inside roofless houses, or nestled, half-hidden, in narrow alleys. “I never thought to see that,” she said, pointing to a small patch of earth from which beans grew around a crude wooden trellis.
Lysander nodded. “It’s more common than you’d think. The soil down here isn’t very good, but people still manage to grow all sorts of things: lettuce, cucumbers, melons. Back when I was a lightboy, I even knew a woman who kept chickens and a few pigs. She lost as many to gangs as she sold or ate, though.”
Duchess shook her head. “Think how much food they could grow for the city, if the blackarms would protect them from the gangs.”
“How many gangs are there?” Castor asked.
Lysander shrugged. “It varies from day to day. Gangs are killed or driven away, or break up and re-form with different names. In my time, the main ones were the Crow Soldiers, the Silent, the Dead, the Hollow Men, and of course you’ve met the Red Smiles.” He twirled his stick idly as they walked. “You hear strange rumors from time to time, of new ones with stranger names. I heard of one called the Moon Flowers, but that might be just talk.”
She could have tried to frune all this, she thought, if her mark were still worth a damn. These days she couldn’t frune her own name. She felt helpless, too reliant on information Lysander himself admitted was outdated, but what choice did she have?
They came to a place where the road passed through a cut between the remnants of a stone wall on one side and a high bank on the other, and Castor stopped. “That choke-point is the perfect spot for an ambush,” he said in a low voice. “Let’s find another way around, maybe to the right.”
Lysander shook his head. “The Rifts are that way. Past the Lane of Ash.” Castor looked blank.
“A lot of these houses sat atop cellars,” Duchess explained to the former White. “During the Great Fire the buildings on top fell right in, but not all of them collapsed completely, leaving the Rifts. It’s incredibly dangerous, as I understand it. The ground could shift and drop beneath you at any moment. ” She made a dubious gesture. “Can we go left?”
Lysander shook his head. “Left is Deep Ones territory—or someone worse if it’s been taken from them. Believe me, we’d rather face the ambush.” He pointed to the road. “This is the way, unless you want to backtrack halfway to the Shallows and start out again. It’ll be night by then, though, and we do not want to be doing this in the dark.”
“Unless you know someone who knows the way.” The voice came from the shadow of an overhang on their left, and it was soon followed by a tall stick of a man, with hair the color of dirty straw. He wore no shoes and his clothes were ragged and torn. He stepped into the lane and Duchess noticed that his left leg seemed to shake each time it came down.
Lysander laughed. “Gauld? Dear gods, you’re still alive?”
“I’m just as surprised. Heard you’d gone for good.” The shake in h
is leg seemed to extend to his voice, and he had a lisp to boot, no doubt due to his hairlip. He smelled of the district as well, but Lysander smiled and, crossing the distance between them, swept the man into a hug. Gauld made as if to resist, grinning lopsidedly, but Lysander was having none of it. Duchess looked at Castor, who raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
Lysander and Gauld spoke quietly to one another, Gauld occasionally shaking his head and glancing at Castor with apprehension. Lysander whispered something and Gauld gave a shaky laugh. Soon enough, Lysander came back to where they were standing. “This is Gauld, and he can show us a way through the Rifts.”
“A safe way?” Castor asked pointedly.
“Safe as anything can be, down here,” Gauld replied. Ragged he might be, but his ears worked well enough. “Else you can take the path and hope to the gods you get lucky.”
“This is not a good idea,” Castor murmured, so that Gauld would not hear.
Lysander rolled his eyes. “Gauld knows his business, and if he says there’s a better way, I believe him.” He stepped ahead and gestured for Gauld to proceed. The man moved quickly despite his leg, and rather than take the center path, he led them towards the Rifts. Lysander and Gauld went side by side, with Duchess behind and Castor bringing up the rear.
“You said yourself that road’s almost designed for an ambush,” Duchess murmured to Castor. “In the other direction are Deeps gangs who are probably even more dangerous after Amabilis spent most of last year arming them with good steel. What else are we going to do?”
“And you trust this man?” The distaste in Castor’s voice was evident.
She never hesitated. “I trust Lysander. That’s enough.” Castor frowned but said nothing more.
The path curved a long way around the bank and then turned downward. Gauld paused just before the slope, pointing off to the right, and as she and Castor approached they saw what Lysander and Gauld were looking at. The Lane of Ash.
Lysander’s description had not done it justice. In the years since the Great Fire, nothing had been done with the place, whether out of propriety or practicality she could not say. It looked precisely as it must have after the Great Fire; the remains of a great row of buildings hastily torn down, with ashes and soot thick over it all. She could see where the flames had raged, burning the wooden buildings to cinders, melting and scorching everything else. Lysander had stood here, years ago, and watched it all burn.
So too had Gauld, from the look in his eye. Lysander patted him on the back and the man turned away and led them into the Lane itself. Halfway down the slope, he turned and motioned to some fallen stonework, lying beside the way. “This is it,” he murmured. Duchess wasn’t sure what he meant, but when Gauld and Lysander began to pull at the chunks of rock, she stepped forward to help. Castor held back, eyes scanning for some hint of a trap or ambush, but the three of them were enough to push aside a fallen block of gray stone to reveal a stairway descending into darkness. “Through here,” Gauld whispered.
“What’s this?” Castor asked in a voice tight with suspicion.
Lysander smiled grimly. “Why go over the Rifts when you can go through them?” He gestured at the steps. “These will take us into a cellar, and from there we can get into the next, and the next after that.”
You couldn’t fall into a cellar if you were already there, she had to admit. She looked at the stairs uncertainly. “And this will take us to the other side?”
“All the way,” Gauld replied. “Just take her slow and steady and you’ll come right through.” Lysander nodded agreement and, with no real alternative, Duchess decided to trust them both. She moved to place a foot on the steps but Castor preempted her.
“I’ll go down and make sure there are no surprises,” he said, with a glance at Gauld. The man flinched slightly away, to let the former White pass. Castor moved down the stairs, testing each to ensure it was solid before moving on to the next. Duchess waited until he’d descended a dozen steps before moving to follow. She glanced back at Lysander, who waved her on.
“I’ll be along in a moment,” he said, and from his look she knew it was best to ask no more. Down the steps she went, but as soon as she was out of sight she paused, listening. Above, she heard Lysander say, “Sorry about him. He’s...like Kit, in a way.”
She heard Gauld bark a laugh, long and loud, that deteriorated into a cough. “So he is, I guess,” he finally managed.
There was the clink of metal, then Gauld said, “No. Oh no.”
“It’s nowhere near what I owe you. Or Kit.” Lysander sighed. “I’m...I’m sorry. I’m sorry I haven’t been back. I just...couldn’t.” He paused. “I still think about him, sometimes.”
Duchess felt her heart squeeze in her chest; this Kit, whoever he had been, was a part of the life Lysander had lived before he met her, back on that day of catching cats.
“More’n I can say for some.” Gauld sighed. “You shouldn’t have come back. No one should. We’ve lost enough of us.”
Lysander had not chosen to share this part of his life, and it was wrong of her to try to steal it. She crept down the stairs, out of earshot of the rest of the conversation.
At the bottom she found Castor, standing in a debris-choked room which was only partially roofed. The late-morning light filtered in through shattered beams above, revealing a wide crack on the opposite wall. Gauld was as good as his word, at least so far. Before she could say anything, Lysander came down the stairs, alone. “All set?” he said, giving no sign that he had detected Duchess’ eavesdropping.
She looked at Castor, who nodded. “Lead on.”
The three of them moved from cellar to cellar, climbing over rocks and fallen beams and earning scrapes and bruises aplenty. They saw no human life but disturbed all manner of other creatures. A flock of pigeons took flight from one room they entered, a possum scampered into the shadows in another, and there were rats everywhere one looked. “Not an easy path,” Castor remarked as they picked their way along.
“A bit tricky, but it’s better than the alternative.” Lysander’s voice was tight with annoyance. “And we’ll be through before long.”
“You trust this man?”
“With my life.”
“He might have pointed us right towards a trap.”
“But he didn’t.”
Castor made no reply, but his silence spoke volumes. Duchess rolled her eyes; they’d been picking at each other all day and she didn’t know what to do about it. She was starting to regret not having come alone.
The path through the cellars was anything but direct, but Lysander seemed to know his way and, as he promised, before long they came to a staircase leading up. It was split and splintered, but Castor judged it sufficient to hold their weight, so up they went, first Castor, then Duchess, then Lysander.
As they emerged into the light of noon, Lysander looked about and smiled. “We’re through the Rifts,” he announced, turning his face up to the shrouded sun. He looked back at the stairway. “Let’s mark this with something, so we’ll know the right way back.” Duchess pointed out a large rock in a near-hexagonal shape, and Castor wrestled it over to mark the way.
“Right,” Duchess said, relieved to be done with cellars and stairways. “Onward and downward.” Lysander cast about for the right direction and they were off, this time with Lysander leading and Castor bringing up the rear.
If Duchess had hoped that moving above ground would dispel the tension, she could not have been more wrong. From behind her, Castor said, “This Gauld...was he a customer of yours?”
Lysander stopped in his tracks, turning slowly to face the former White. “It always comes back to that with you, doesn’t it? I can’t know anyone any other way? Do I get to know every woman you’ve ever touched, or is it only my history that’s open for scrutiny? I don’t pretend to know you. Kindly extend me the same courtesy.” He kicked a loose stone and sent it flying. “From the top of the hill you look down on me, but where do you think I do m
ost of my work? Those fine people you served are just as sick as I am.” He gave Castor a withering look, then turned and stalked away down the hill. “I used sex to leave the Deeps,” he called over his shoulder. “You used violence to get into Garden. Which of us is the sicker?”
Castor had no reply, nor did she, and so in silence they left the Rifts behind, moving towards the heart of the Deeps.
* * *
“We have to go there?” she squeaked, looking down from the rise where she stood between Castor and Lysander.
The Narrows were a maze, a warren, a hive, with passages so cramped and countless they made the paths in the Deeps seem spacious. Houses were built in long rows, so tightly packed that the distinction between them was meaningless. They were even built atop one another, rising four or more stories above the ground. Wooden platforms connected these dwellings, crisscrossing here and there as if to block out the sky entirely, while doorways and passages opened in all directions. The Narrows were a city within the city, a parody of order even more lawless than the chaos of the Deeps that surrounded it on all sides.
“Great Mayu,” she breathed, unable to take her eyes from that bewilderment of rooms and passages. “All this wood, packed so tightly together. The place must have gone up like kindling during the Great Fire.” She tried to imagine how many people had died in the labyrinth of its halls, then decided it was better not to know.
“It was a terrible time,” Lysander said simply. “Let’s keep moving.”
Even though the sun was still high in the sky, under the slapdash roofs of the Narrows there was only a grim twilight. Lysander led them along a lane defined by the hodgepodge of pitted and precarious wooden walls on either side. He led them purposefully from passage to passage, turn to turn, as if he knew precisely where he was going. She prayed he was right, because she felt more lost than ever. Castor seemed equally uneasy, scanning every side passage and turning again and again to watch their flank.